All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Apparently Hollywood wouldn't mind tossing Darksiders up on the silver screen, as Vigil's Joe Madureira confirmed to VG247 that THQ's already been contacted for projects outside of the video game realm. "We've gotten some interest from Hollywood, we've talked about doing a comic series," said Madureira. Obviously, a comic wouldn't be much of a stretch for the creative director, given his past experience with the medium. "It's really a THQ thing, but I know they are definitely talking to people and I would be surprised if some of that stuff didn't happen," he added. While we can't really say whether the prospect of either is a good thing at this point -- we're still playing Darksiders for review -- we'll be sure to let you all know either way.

2D mayhem returns to the handheld.

Flickr user Tom "Givintats" Keller has created a Halo-themed aquarium fit for a squad of cosplaying goldfish wearing cod-pieces. The scene includes hunters, marines, a warthog and some pretty blue lights that bring the Forerunner architecture to life. The scene is maintained through the use of putty and wire. We're certainly impressed -- wonder if he does little fishbowl commissions? Check out the full set on Flickr. [Via Hawtymcbloggy]

"Clicking out beats to the Mario tunes with disposable pens" sounds a lot less impressive and awesome than this video actually is, so you might as well go ahead and check the video after the break to watch for yourself. We can't help think that Shane has better things to do, but this is what the kids are up to nowadays, we guess. No more useless than pogs were back in the nineties, and a lot cheaper to boot. A better question might be: Where can we get that T-shirt? Our extensive Google-searching turned up lots of great Mario shirts, but we couldn't find that one for sale. If you see it online, let us know in the comments below. [Via GoNintendo]

2009 looked fairly dire for the Japanese games industry. Now that we're on the other side of the year, we can assess the damage. Andriasang reports Enterbrain numbers claiming that, overall, the market shrank ¥543 billion, a reduction of 6.9% from 2008. Since we're in a Seinfeld-quoting mood today, we might posit that the Japanese game industry had been in the pool. Hardware sales dropped 13.9%, with the DS unsurprisingly leading among consoles with 4,025,313 million units and the Xbox 360 even less surprisingly at the bottom, with 331,706 consoles sold. In software, the big winner (or smallest loser, we suppose, given the overall tone of the news) was Dragon Quest IX, which sold a whopping 4,100,968 copies -- slightly more than the total number of DS consoles sold in 2009! Final Fantasy XIII managed to make it onto the tail end of the top five with 1,698,256 copies. But if you weren't Square Enix or Nintendo (who had the other three spots on the top five software charts), 2009 was one to forget.

It's time for more tag team Duel Monsters action, but these matches are mostly the same thing you've seen before.

We hope you came here today to see a ridiculous amount of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney footage on WiiWare, because there are three ridiculously long videos past the break showing off just that. As expected, it's more or less unchanged in its transition from Nintendo's handheld to its home console -- save for the new Wiimote gestures and bigger pixels. Regardless, we certainly wouldn't object to you clicking past the break to check out the trio of trailers (see what we did there?). [Via Capcom Unity]

Put your name in videogame lights.

The online battles of Sega's Chromehounds come to an end tomorrow, January 6, 2010. The game will disconnect all online operations after three years of service and only offline components will be available. The Xbox 360 exclusive seemed like a perfect fit for Live, but the mechanized warfare just never seemed to catch on, with critics giving it an average Metacritic of 71. We'd check to see how many people are playing this game online at the moment, but it appears nobody we know has a copy. Hey, while you're reading this, mind checking? Thanks! [Thanks, DigitalFirefly]

Strategy is key to a flawless victory.

Assemble an Away Team and prepare to beam down.

The beta, the final frontier.

Tired of not being able to save your progress in Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth? Reader Marl0 has a little tip for you guys that should make things much easier… LEVEL SELECT: All you have to do, is hold right on the d-pad for a few seconds while you’re highlighting “Start Game”. It’s that simple!

Come face-to-face with the future of terror.

Rescue the children who's spirits have been captured in this game created by 15 students in DePaul University's Game Development Program.

Our friends at Ghostfire Games just sent over an email letting me know about a pretty rad contest that they’re offering up for Rage of the Gladiator, which should be out fairly soon, pending Nintendo approval. Hit up the details below to see how you can win yourself a credit in Ghostfire’s next project, [...]

Remember the last TNA game? It's back. Only in PSP form.

The Metroid Database had a contest for their readers where they were tasked with making their own Metroid. You can check out some of the amazing entries at the link below.

When the Darkspawn talk, the war is far from over.

[Image credit: Vermin Inc] If it weren't for the fact that the recent "Andrew Brown asks" is a featured piece on UK-based MCV, the answers to his questions repeatedly starting with "Whilst" would have likely tipped us off to the Britishness of the feature and all involved. Both Sony's Ray Maguire and Nintendo's David Yarnton employ the subordinating conjunction whilst responding to questions about everything from the future of digital distribution to what the industry will look like in 2019. Though the Sony and Nintendo execs were a bit more reserved in their predictions, Microsoft's Neil Thompson believes digital distribution will "explode in the next three years." All three gentlemen admitted that retail will still play a major role for (at very least) a few more years. As for cloud computing, only Microsoft's Thompson seems to be on board. "I'm convinced cloud will play a central role in the games industry of the future ... our strategy is certainly to enable people to connect to their key entertainment content through innovative services that span across multiple devices." Our only worry is that, by the time all this future stuff arrives, we'll be too busy cruising around in our flying cars to care.

An overview of the surgery portion of the new medical drama video game Trauma Team from Atlus.

The Japanese Wii and DSi Shops are taking it easy on the first week back after a holiday, with just one WiiWare, one Virtual Console, and two DSiWare games available, quite a change from the massive pileups of previous weeks. The Virtual Console game is the Super Famicom version of Kirby's Star Stacker, an original Kirby-themed puzzle game we received on the Game Boy. And on WiiWare, a painfully adorable ... train simulator? DSiWare has another G.G. series shmup, and another miniature Paint By DS featuring cats. Pretty mellow week! Boku wa Pla-Rail Untenshi: Shinkansen & Joukikansha Hen (1-2 players, 1,000 Wii Points) Kirby's Star Stacker (Super Famicom, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points) G.G. Series Dark Spirits (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points) Artist ni Narou! Minna no Nurikai Neko Hen (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)

Mad Catz brings its popular fighting game peripheral to the Wii.

You can run, but you can't hide.

Hudson has finally taken the training wheels off of the Calling site to open up the full thing. There’s really not all that much on the site as far as new goodies are concerned, but it does provide a nice place to check out all the info we’ve learned thus far. Hit up [...]

With the exception of Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII, games have rarely needed more than the 25 GB offered by a standard single-layer Blu-ray disc. The lack of demand hasn't stopped Sony and Panasonic, though. The two companies have developed a new technology called "i-MLSE" that can increase the capacity of a single-layer disc by about a third, to 33.4 GB. According to Nikkei Electronics, i-MLSE is a processor-intensive method that will allow players to properly calculate the read-error rate, a stumbling block that prevented larger capacity discs. Presumably, it will only take a firmware update to ensure Blu-ray players (like the PS3) can utilize the new disc format. Sony plans on encouraging widespread adoption through the Blu-ray Disc Association, which shouldn't be a problem considering Sony plays a pretty large role in that organization. [Via Engadget]

Did you think that the new year was going to get you away from Retro Game Challenge talk? Well think again, my friends! This gem of a DS game offers plenty of fun for all sorts of gamers, and even allows for some in-depth analysis from those that are much smarter and patient [...]